Brenda van Bovene’s Monday was punctuated by screams. First, the screams of her 11-year-old Australian silky terrier Tammy, then by her own shrill cries — so loud that a neighbor across the street heard them through his ear buds as he listened to his iPod.

Van Bovene heard Tammy crying in a terrible, distressed way from the backyard that afternoon, which prompted the 56-year-old woman to rush outside to see what was wrong. She was shocked to find her 15-lb. dog caught in the stranglehold of an 8-ft. python, which was slowly coiling itself around Tammy in a bid to kill her.

And that’s when van Bovene started yelling for help. “Nobody was responding to my screaming, and in a split second, I just knew I had to get the snake off my dog,” van Bovene, of Bushland Beach, Australia, t “I literally pulled and pulled and pulled on the snake’s tail. I didn’t stop to think of my own safety, I just knew there was no way in hell was I letting this python eat my dog!'”

Somehow, without any tools or aid, just her own adrenaline-fueled strength, van Bovene wrested the cold snake off of her yelping dog. She can’t say how long it took because the experience seemed to happen in a blur. “When I pulled that final pull, it sounded like fabric ripping,” van Bovene says. “When I went to the vet, the snake’s tooth was lodged in Tammy’s chest. I ripped the snake’s tooth out! After I did it, my whole body just shook.”More

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It was just another afternoon at Maxine Davis’s house. She and her husband were sitting in their living room, watching TV. Out of habit, and somewhat distractedly, Davis gave one of her two Australian shepherds a piece of kibble as a treat.

The 6-year-old Aussie, named Sydnee, took the treat, and having much enjoyed it, hoped to get a little more. So she stared at Davis for as long as she could, but when the TV seemed to be winning the battle, Sydnee barked. Twice.”I didn’t think about it, I’m watching TV,” Davis tells “She barks again! Three times! She was adding. I thought, well, maybe this dog can count.”

Sydnee had everyone’s attention. After giving the dog another piece of kibble, and realizing that she was adding one bark to the series with each new piece, Davis and her husband thought they could do something with Sydnee’s nascent math skills.Davis practiced counting with the dog for about a week before the dog fully mastered her counting and learned to count from 1 to 10 (she can now bark a number on command). Will she learn how to get to 100?More

my bro send me this video and………..its really cute and make u go awwwwwwwwwww
hope you all like it ….:)

In 1969 a young Australian, John Rendall and his friend Ace Bourke, bought a small lion cub from Harrods pet department, which was then legal. ‘Christian’ was kept in the basement of a furniture shop on the Kings Road in Chelsea, the heart of the swinging sixties. Loved by all, the affectionate cub ate in a local restaurant, played in a nearby graveyard, but was growing fast…

A chance encounter with Bill Travers and Virginia McKenna led to a new life for Christian. He came to live in a huge enclosure and to sleep in a caravan at their Surrey home. Then in 1971 he was flown to Kenya, his ancestral home, and returned to the wild by lion-man George Adamson. Nine months later in 1972, John and Ace returned to Kora in Kenya. This clip is of their reunion at that time.

Homeleigh retirement village is a perfect place to spend the twilight years, with staff to clean and cook, a garden and immaculate quarters. But forget about signing up – unless you are a cat.Inside a fully functional house next to Keysborough Animal Shelter in outer Melbourne, the only residents are twelve aged felines.

A shelter staff member visits every morning and night to feed the moggies and human visitors pop in to spend a few hours.
Elizabeth Johns, one of the directors of the village, said the cats never fought and would roam the house and garden at will.
Ms Johns, who visits twice a week, said owners can rest easy knowing their pets will be cared for. That’s the case even if an owner dies or is incapacitated. “You can’t often rehome a cat, especially an older cat, and people want peace of mind,” she said.

To become a resident, cats must be at least eight years old and owners must donate $6000 to cover expenses for the cat’s life.

Pig lungs could be transplanted into humans to overcome a shortage of donor organs after a medical breakthrough.Australian scientists have paved the way for animal-human transplants in as little as five years, after keeping pig lungs alive and functioning with human blood.The breakthrough came after scientists at Melbourne’s St Vincent’s Hospital were able to remove a section of pig DNA called the Gal gene, which made the pig organs incompatible with human blood.

Prof Tony D’Apice – who has been breeding pigs for possible transplants since 1989 – said human DNA was added to the engineered animals to control blood clotting and rejection in humans.Dr Glenn Westall, from the Alfred Hospital in Melbourne, said the world-first discovery meant pig-human lung transplants were a real prospect.

He said: ‘Five to six hours into the experiment they seemed to be working as well as they were at the start.’The blood went into the lungs without oxygen and came out with oxygen, which is the exact function of the lungs.’It showed that these lungs were working perfectly well and doing as we were expecting them to do.”This is a significant advance compared to experiments that have been performed over the past 20 years.’More

When motorcross bike rider Mike Schelin, 41, first got his dog Opee in 2002, he had no idea the blue merle Australian shepherd would become his race partner.”I love dogs and couldn’t believe how I bonded with Opee after we got to know each other,” Schelin, who lives in Perris, Calif., with the now 8-year-old pooch, “Right away we started playing in the desert on weekends, and I found he liked my dirt bike. He would run to chase me while I was riding.”So Schelin plunked down $3,000 to buy a four-wheeler that would fit them both.

“I bought it so we could ride together,” says Schelin. “I started a construction business because I wanted a job where I could take my best friend to work. So I figured we could also spend our weekends together if he learned to ride with me along desert roads.”

Once Schelin saw that Opee disliked getting dust in his eyes, he bought his pooch a pair of goggles. After a couple of heady turns when the goggles fell off, Schelin strapped them around the dog’s chin.”Opee showed a liking for my Harley so he rides on the tank with me and loves it,” the motocross racer . “I got him a half helmet and we both wear backpacks. When he’s all geared up with a neck brace, inflatable vest, jerseys, etc., he weighs nearly 100 lbs. I call him my sack of cement!”More

The unfortunately named blobfish has already acquired a reputation for looking sad.And now it has good reason for its glum expression – scientists are warning over-fishing by trawlers of its south eastern Australian habitat is threatening to make it extinct.The bloated bottom dweller, which can grow up to 12 inches, lives at depths of up to 800m, so it rarely seen by humans. But thanks to increased fishing, the fish is being dragged up with other catches.

Despite being unedible itself, the blobfish lives at the same depths as other more appetising ocean organisms, including crab and lobster.Deep-sea expert Professor Callum Roberts, from University of York, said the blobfish had plenty to be miserable about. Prof Roberts, author The Unnatural History of the Sea, said: ‘Blobfish are very vulnerable to being dragged up in these nets and from what we know this fish is only restricted to these waters.More